Luiz's Tome - Old Ones, Old Men and a Spooky Theater
Player: CJ GM: Phil Date: March 17th Hunters: Luiz, Jackie, Katarina, Morgan, Sorrak Luiz's Report It seems I can't visit a theater without chopping off a head or experiencing ancient horrors and temporary time warps... Just one uninterrupted performance of Evita and I'd be a happy man. I digress! A group of fellow hunters, including yours truly, gathered in San Francisco to investigate The Paradise Theater. There had been rumors of a haunting in this place many years ago, and now with a grand reopening on the way something strange had struck again. One of the volunteers had fallen from the scaffolding, injuring herself dreadfully and blaming ghosts for her tumble. Jackie was there again (straight out of a Stephen King novel), as was Katarina (who must love theaters as much as I do). Also joining us was Morgan (who Katarina had spoken very favourably about in the past) and Sorrak (smells worse than he dresses, potentially homeless/insane). The most venerable among my group had only a morsel of information to give me before we set out. Of course this was no issue as Tezcatlipoca always provides for his most blessed follower Luiz. Even the test of not using magic was a simple task with his omnipotent presence guiding my hand. Again... I digress. We tried entering The Paradise through conventional means (read: the front door) but we were soon shooed out and onto the street. Jackie got a headache while on the way out and I decided it was high time to give her some space. We moved to the public library where I managed to set a computer on fire before we convinced a librarian to help us dig up some dirt on The Paradise's past and it's generous benefactors. It seemed The Paradise had been around for quite some time, existing first as a theater, then a cinema, then a dilapidated wreck. It also housed a speak-easy - "The Sound and Light Club" during the prohibition era. It's past owners were the Allen family and it's current sponsor and head of The Allen Family Trust was a Mr. Richard Jacobs - Remember that name because we end up killing him later on. We decided that Sorrak would be the least missed best person to look after Jackie. I went to see a journalist who thought The Paradise was haunted, Katarina and Morgan went to see the injured woman who fell from the scaffolding, Sorrak and Jackie went for milkshakes. Turns out the journalist was dead, killed recently in a hit and run. I turned up just in time for the wake which was fun. Whoever said weddings were great places for picking up women clearly hadn't been to enough wakes! We regrouped at The Paradise later that night. Morgan and Katarina looked a little shaken. Apparently a TV exploded and killed the woman they were meant to chat with, but not before they saw some shadowy shape on the screen. After breaking in through the stage door we discovered strange flickering lights and a huge mirror behind the cinema screen. Jackie got her arm burnt by something nasty in the mirror and then Morgan found some sort of time-shifting door hatch in the ceiling . We decided not to open it. Exploring the dark, stinking speak-easy was clearly the most inviting option and so we all moved down there, flashlights piercing the thick layers of dust our feet stirred up. I discovered a hidden door and set about getting it open. This is about the time that something started smacking against the furnace in the corner of the room... from the inside. Sorrak threw open the door to reveal a screaming and burning woman who disappeared when Morgan tried to save her. A little creepy, but once you've seen someone burnt alive a couple of times before it does lose it's novelty factor. This is when the hidden room I had opened up illuminated itself, revealing the figures of 13 men wearing masks standing around a summoning(?) circle on the floor. Morgan didn't care to see what was about to happen and threw a bolt of ice at them, tearing through the projector screen they existed upon and smashing the projector behind it. We moved into the room, which was the one we had just seen projected onto the screen. The roof was a painted image of the night sky, there were three thrones with projectors sat on them and the same summoning circle was on the floor (plus a few bloodstains). I moved out into the foyer and up the stairs, pausing to look down at the rest of the group. As I looked down I began to hear a discordant tune and the foyer carpet twisted into the shapes of writhing corpses. The movie reels in the projector room seemed to be relatively harmless and so on Morgan's insistence we went back into the basement to fiddle about with reality/time/the spooky death circle on the ground. With a little magical persuasion we watched a scene from the past unfold as the masked men sacrificed three children to summon some sort of minor deity which handed them a book. At this point we figured out that the theater was probably going to be turned into a mass sacrifice on opening night, someone wanted to summon a "Dweller" and that it would be wise to pay Mr. Richard Jacobs a midnight visit to see if he knew anything. Mr. Jacobs clearly valued his privacy and with a little help from Tezcatlipoca (in a show of his truly magnanimous grace) we made it past both the security cameras on his property and whatever was lurking in the bushes. Morgan and Katarina shut down the power with their magic and we slipped inside the mansion. After snooping around we found the library, light shining from around the edges of a single book. Pulling on it revealed an exact replica of the speak-easy's secret room. In the centre of the room knelt Mr. Jacobs, complaining about how difficult it was going to be to summon The Dweller. This was the confession we needed and Katarina acted quickly, encasing Mr. Jacobs in ice... But not before he shot a tendril of darkness at her, withering her arm . My macuahuitl skittered off the ice and I tried my best to avoid attention as the fight descended into a magic slinging match. Jackie unleashed "Rollo", Sorrak channeled energy through his 9mm pistol, Morgan threw magical shields up to defend the others and Mr. Jacobs hurled bolts of pure darkness at everyone he could see. Truly, this was a test of patience. A patience rewarded when Katarina dispelled the ice encasing Mr. Jacobs and I struck. Dark energy washed over me as the heavy obsidian teeth of my weapon bit deep into Mr. Jacobs' neck, nearly severing the old man's head. As his blood pooled on the floor we heard the sounds of sirens in the distance. The power cut had alerted the authorities. Escaping the property was easy, as was nabbing some presents for my order on the way out. I'm sure they will be appreciated. ... Oh, also The Paradise Theater mysteriously burnt down. W'hil'e 'it was a '''d'el'i'''ghtful theater, '''d'anger seemed to be an 'i'nheren'''t Such a shame.